All The President s Tweets: l. Political Rhetoric on Social Media THAD KOUSSER AND STAN OKLOBDZIJA DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, UC SAN DIEGO

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1 All The President s Tweets: l Political Rhetoric on Social Media THAD KOUSSER AND STAN OKLOBDZIJA DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, UC SAN DIEGO

2 The Twitter Election of 2016

3 Growth in Followers Accelerated Through the Election

4 Growth in Impact of Tweets After the Election

5 The Tweets are Real but the Followers May be Fake

6 NPR s BOTUS Stock Picking Bot: Using Tweets to Play the Market

7 Two Converging Trends NEW POLITICAL REALITY Social media didn t just reflect politics, it drove the campaign narrative, making news again and again ADVANCES IN ANALYTICS Big data tools got better at the little things, with word2vec approach allowing algorithms to learn from linguistic context

8 Guiding Artificial Intelligence with Human Intelligence Four disciplines working together in four-step process (humans categorize, train, test, and machine categorization)

9 What Can We Learn About Tweets? For the 157,076 campaign tweets by 23 candidates and 23 SuperPACs: What was the ideology? (left, right, or center) Did the tweet convey a sentiment? (negative, positive, or neutral) Was it political or personal? What policy area did it address? Did it make a factual claim or profess an opinion? Did it ask the follower to take action? Retweets, hashtags, date

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11 Do Tweets Convey Ideology? tedcruz 2% realdonaldtrump 5% HillaryClinton 51% BernieSanders 47% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%

12 When Tweet to the Left? Foreign Policy I opposed going into Iraq. Hillary voted for it. As with everything else she's supported, it was a DISASTER Economy #CrookedHillary is nothing more than a Wall Street PUPPET! Crooked Hillary has never created a job in her life. We will create 25 million jobs Anti-Establishment Bill Kristol has been wrong for 2yrs-an embarrassed loser, but if the GOP can't control their own, then they are not a party. Be tough, R's!

13 Did Candidates Run to the Center? % of Tweets that are Liberal 60% 50% 40% 51% 47% 40% 37% BernieSanders 30% HillaryClinton 20% 21% realdonaldtrump tedcruz 10% 0% 2% 5% Before and During the Primaries 6% General Election

14 Do Campaign Dynamics Shape Twitter Communication Strategies? BROADCAST HASTAGS #election2016 #fitn #nhpolitics #isis #iran ECHO CHAMBER HASTAGS #incomeinequality #nhra #ycot #sot #americathebeautiful

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16 When candidates drop in the polls, they tweet to broadcast hashtags

17 Are We Moving From Truth to enters race

18 Are We Moving From Truth to Truthy? Fact-Claiming Tweets GovernorPerry ChrisChristie tedcruz RandPaul CorrectRecord GovMikeHuckabee JohnKasich BernieSanders RealBenCarson marcorubio HillaryClinton realdonaldtrump greatamericapac 19% 29% 31% 36% 36% 38% 47% 46% 45% 43% 43% 43% 42% 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50%

19 Are We Moving From Truth to Truthy?

20 What Makes a Tweet Go Viral?

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22 Most Viral Tweets Source Tweet Delete your account. To all the little girls watching...never doubt that you are valuable and powerful & deserving of every chance & opportunity in the world TODAY WE MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! How horrible. Voldemort was nowhere near as Such a beautiful and important evening! The forgotten man and woman will never be forgotten again. How long did it take your staff of 823 people to think that up--and where are your 33,000 s that you delete.. 206,025 Never tweet. The media is spending more time doing a forensic analysis of Melania's speech than the FBI spent on Hillary's 122,614

23 What Makes a Tweet Go Viral? Sentiment Matters

24 What Makes a Tweet Go Viral? Fact vs. Opinion

25 What Makes a Tweet Go Viral? All Candidates and SuperPacs Expresses an Opinion 200.1*** Negative Sentiment 129.5*** Positive Sentiment ** Liberal Ideology 159.8*** Conservative Ideology Macroeconomic Policy *** Immigration Policy ***

26 What Makes a Tweet Go Viral? Audience Matters Donald Trump Hillary Clinton Expresses an Opinion *** 556.0** Negative Sentiment *** 158 Positive Sentiment ** Liberal Ideology *** *** Conservative Ideology Macroeconomic Policy ** -1,083** Immigration Policy ,348

27 Next Steps How did the success reshape the rhetoric of other candidates? Did they copy his subjects, his positions, his tone, or his words? How did becoming president Can a SuperPAC say things a candidate can t? What kinds of facts does the Twittersphere embrace?